Charter school teachers in Chicago went on strike last week, striking for at least four consecutive days in the first charter school strike in our nation’s history.
Teachers at Acero charter network, which contains 15 schools and serves more than 7,500 predominantly Latino students, are demanding better pay, more support staff, smaller class sizes, and guaranteed protection for students and families living in the U.S. illegally.
Charter teachers taking to the picket lines are exactly what teachers’ unions want.
Teachers’ unions in general, and the Chicago Teachers Union in particular, have vocally opposed charter schools since their creation. Fearing that these privately run but publicly funded schools divert funding from traditional public schools, union leaders across the nation stop at nothing to shut them down.
The Chicago Teachers Union itself recently required a moratorium against the growth of charter schools and the number of students able to enroll in each one.
The irony? This same union is ostensibly supporting the Acero strike — likely because it serves their end goal of portraying charter schools as disorganized and unreliable educational institutions.
Sadly, the union’s efforts are working. In the midst of this strike, the Chicago Board of Education (already filled with Chicago Public School advocates to begin with) moved this week to close two charter campuses and to deny three pending charter school applications.
Acero CEO Richard Rodriguez believes the strike is a subversive attack by union leaders on charter schools to further their “anti-charter political agenda.”
“There is absolutely no good reason to put students and parents through the upheaval of a strike,” Rodriguez said. “The sad fact is that interests from outside our community are using our students and our schools as a means to advance their national anti-charter platform.”
Created to exist as an educational alternative free from the special interests of teachers unions and bureaucracy of district public schools, charter schools are falling prey to the same forces that hinder traditional schools from serving students first.
Charter schools must consider holding true to the principles underlying their founding. It is these that render them free to innovate and meet students’ needs in ways traditional school districts cannot.
Allying with the unions who have publicly pledged to destroy them will indeed result in their elimination.
Kate Hardiman is a contributor to Red Alert Politics. She is pursuing a master’s in education from Notre Dame University and teaches English and religion at a high school in Chicago.
